"Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

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"Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 27, 2016 3:42 am

I really hate this phrase. It's a thought-terminating cliche and implies the naturalistic fallacy while being superficially tautological. It's also vague, but I generally see it used in two contexts.

  1. The discussion of whether exotic pets should be legal. In this case "wild animal" refers to any animal which isn't domesticated. As I've noted repeatedly, I am strongly in favor of people being able to keep exotic animals as pets, so it should come as no surprise that this usage pisses me off.
  2. The discussion of whether people should take baby animals from the wild and raise them. In this case, "wild" means "not captive-bred."
It's the later usage that I'm thinking of, because of this post of Tess's and my response to it. I'm sure it seems like I'm joking, but I absolutely am not. I'm kind of schizophrenic about starlings. I hate them for being invasive and not only outcompeting but also outright killing the young of other birds. But I kind of want a pet starling, and if I found a baby starling I'd likely consider taking it in and raising it, then keeping it as a pet.

As a kid, I received a copy of The American Boy's Handy Book, and one of the most dog-worn sections was the one on raising baby birds to be pets. Of course when I asked at the nature camp my parents sent me to one session a summer, I would be dogmatically told the same thing: "Wild animals belong in the wild."

Then, when I was too old to be a camper, and started volunteering at the camp instead, I met a councilor who didn't share this view. Back when she was a kid, before Massachusetts passed a broad-based ban on keeping any native wildlife except reptiles, she took in a baby raccoon, which she had raised as a pet and had so many stories about.

There are a handful of arguments against taking baby animals from the wild:

  1. Conservation. Some of these species may be endangered.
    -
  2. Animal welfare. People may not know how to care for these animals.
    -
  3. Disease. Carnivores and bats may carry rabies (other animals too, but less commonly), armadillos may carry leprosy, and rodents (our closest relatives native to North America) carry all sorts of nasty diseases, particularly the hantavirus.
    -
  4. Tameness. Animals that aren't domesticated will almost never be as tame as domesticated animals. Getting scratched or bitten is almost inevitable with many species (though it's also almost inevitable for cats and hamsters), and they will make a mess of your house.
    -
  5. Animal rights. Cats and dogs are bad enough. It is not acceptable to use a non-domesticated animal for our own edification.
I flatly reject the animal rights argument. Frankly, I think nobody who isn't a vegan has any grounds for making an animal rights argument. If you eat cheeseburgers and wear leather or wool, you have no business making arguments against pet ownership, which is considerably kinder to the animals than factory farming. However I encounter a lot of people who aren't vegans or vegetarians who make this argument, usually after I ask them to explain what they mean by "wild animals belong in the wild."

As for the other arguments, they're valid arguments, however the people who make them seem only to look at the costs and not even considering the benefits into their analysis.

  1. Conservation. As I've noted, there are some endangered species that are thriving in the wild. Conservation organizations often refuse to even acknowledge captive populations until a species goes extinct in the wild. The only species which will be preserved are charismatic species which make good pets, but given how often in situ conservation fails, keeping species alive for the pet trade should at least be seen as a slight net positive. Wouldn't it be nice if the Carolina parakeet and passenger pigeon had survived because some of the people who had kept them as pets before the MBTA was passed had been allowed, even encouraged to breed them.
    -
  2. Environmental consciousness. There's a reason some Australian conservationists are in favor of keeping native wildlife as pets. Dogs and cats (particularly cats) are terrible for the ecosystems in which they're allowed even some degree of free range. Native species, such as the quoll, are much less destructive. They don't kill for fun (unlike cats) and they're not as efficient as predators. Though not quite as drastic, I imagine the same argument could be made for raccoons and skunks vs. vats and dog in the US. Plus most exotic pets are kept either indoors or in full enclosures, and have little-to-no contact with the local wildlife.
    -
  3. Education. Properly caring for a new species means learning about its habits and environment, ideally before taking it in, and means getting to watch its behavior after you take it in. Massachusetts allows residents to take certain reptiles and amphibians from the wild for precisely this reason.
    -
  4. Edification. It's fun to have a "wild" animal; its behaviors aren't as predictable as a cat or dog's.

The Migratory Treaty Bird Act, the same piece of legislation which means I cannot have a grackle or a blue jay as a pet is instructive. While it has a blanket prohibition on keeping any native bird, or any part of any native bird, there are exceptions. The best-known exception is for gamebirds, which can be hunted and farmed dependent on state regulations. Another is for wildlife rehabilitators keeping birds which cannot be released into the wild for educational purposes. The third is instructive, because it's the only exemption which allows taking eggs/baby birds from the wild and raising them. That exception is falconry.

Birds of prey generally don't make good pets, since they're not cuddly, can seriously injure you, and require a lot more care than many bird. Keeping birds of prey is therefore more of a commitment than keeping a mockingbird or chickadee would be. Falconry requires an apprenticeship, which is prohibitive. When I was a teenager, there was a falconer willing to take me as an apprentice. However my father was unwilling to drive me several days a week to a falconer who lived over half an hour away. Then as an adult who could drive himself other issues intervened. Still, I learned about falconry, and I think our system is preferable to the British system, where anybody with the money can buy a hawk or an owl, but you have to have the money to buy a captive-bred one.

However for most native species, better model might be the license to keep native wildlife South Australia and Victoria offer, or a wildlife rehabilitation license in the US (and likely most of the developed world). That usually involves taking some sort of course and some sort of a test, and for rehabbers involves inspection of facilities. However the native wildlife you can keep in South Australia or Victoria must be obtained from a breeder: no taking a baby bandicoot from the wild. And wildlife rehabilitators release any animals that can be rehabilitated, and the unrehabilitatable animals they take in are usually adults, meaning they'll never be as tame as an animal raised from infancy.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think that we should allow to take baby animals of native species from the wild and raise them as pets; I want to do it and I think the benefits outweigh the costs. At the same time, I recognize that there are some legitimate concerns with this.

I would propose that certain warm-blooded species, those which are easy to care for, common, and not major vectors of human-communicable diseases should be legal to take from the wild as pets in small numbers. This would likely include certain particularly adaptable birds and probably the Virginia opossum. For more difficult animals there be some sort of licensing, similar to that for wildlife rehabilitation, including an inspection of facilities. For mammals which can be disease vectors, it would be nice some sort of blood testing for rabies that doesn't kill the animal could be developed, but it seems likely that the best solution would be training on how to watch for communicable diseases the in animals one takes in and how to avoid getting infected until you're sure an animal is clean.

In short, I most emphatically do not believe that "wild animals belong in the wild."
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby Kivutar » Fri May 27, 2016 5:45 am

cmsellers wrote:I would propose that certain warm-blooded species


Why warm-blooded? That seems like a random restriction given the rest of your argument.

Also, I want a fucking snake.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby JamishT » Fri May 27, 2016 5:53 am

Kivutar wrote:
cmsellers wrote:I would propose that certain warm-blooded species


Why warm-blooded? That seems like a random restriction given the rest of your argument.

Also, I want a fucking snake.


Yeah you do.

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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 27, 2016 5:54 am

Kivutar wrote:Why warm-blooded? That seems like a random restriction given the rest of your argument.

Also, I want a fucking snake.

Restrictions on animals as pets usually goes mammals > birds > reptiles and amphibians > fish > invertebrates. There are generally no restrictions on invertebrates and far fewer restrictions on cold-blooded vertebrates.

In Massachusetts there are no restrictions on invertebrates and you can collect most native reptiles and amphibians from the wild as pets, excepting venomous snakes and species where conservation is a concern.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby DashaBlade » Fri May 27, 2016 6:10 am

As someone who's lived where there are ample wild animals, I'll just add that the line between "wild" and "tame" can get pretty cloudy. We had a family of opossums who lived under our house for years; they would come out onto the porch and eat when we fed the neighborhood cats every day and the cats and 'possums got along great. I wouldn't have ever played with the possums or anything like that, but they weren't at all skittish about coming onto the porch when I was sitting there, and I'd greet them with a "good morning" while they had their breakfast. I imagine that if I'd wanted to risk taking the baby possums away from Big Momma Possum, I could probably have at least tamed them enough to live indoors. (But I'm not that brave)

Likewise, I've had many squirrel acquaintances whose young could probably be tamed, and I've known a few raccoons who weren't the least bit shy about coming right up and begging treats. I probably wouldn't suggest taking "wild" animals from their mothers, though if one came across a baby fox or squirrel or whatever and it had been abandoned, I see nothing evil in taking it in and making a friend out of it.

And I've seen the reverse as well, by the way, since I've worked with so many stray, feral, and semi-feral cats. Sure, cats are "domesticated" animals, but it would take a lunatic to approach a feral cat and hope to come out of it whole. If you can socialize a feral cat's kittens early enough, they can be just as friendly as a kitten born in your own bedroom dresser drawer, so I don't see why other mammals of similar intelligence would be impossible to socialize and tame or domesticate. And I don't care how tame a rabbit is or how many generations of captivity are in their ancestry, I've never seen one that isn't scared of people at least a little bit.

Truth is, I bet a lot of the trouble with taming wild animals is that a lot of vets won't treat them. So while they'll gladly give your cat $300 antibiotics for a sniffle, they won't do surgery on an armadillo to save its life, even if the armadillo is nice. :(
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby sunglasses » Fri May 27, 2016 12:55 pm

Kivutar wrote:
cmsellers wrote:I would propose that certain warm-blooded species


Why warm-blooded? That seems like a random restriction given the rest of your argument.

Also, I want a fucking snake.


Normally the only restrictions on snakes is that you cannot house a venomous one without some sort of permit. Many states will let you take garters, corns, or blacksnakes out of your backyard and keep them. Honestly, this is less then ideal when these species all breed incredibly easily in captivity and you can very easily find corn and milk snakes at a pet store. Captive born does mean less likely to have parasites and diseases and less likely to develop stress from handling and captivity.

If you honestly are interested in a snake, please research the breed requirements thoroughly and consider taking in one that someone can no longer keep first. I say this as a snake owner (I have a captive born ball python who is 14 years old).

Dasha is also correct, it can be difficult to find a vet to treat exotic pets.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby Absentia » Fri May 27, 2016 3:41 pm

I would say that with the exception of highly dangerous or endangered animals, keeping critters as pets falls under my "do whatever the hell you want as long as you're not hurting anybody" rule, so vaya con dios. I don't think the police are going to break down your door on suspicion of owning a starling if that's something you really want to do.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 27, 2016 4:23 pm

Absentia wrote:I would say that with the exception of highly dangerous or endangered animals, keeping critters as pets falls under my "do whatever the hell you want as long as you're not hurting anybody" rule, so vaya con dios.

While I would tend to agree, too many people would say that if you take a raccoon or armadillo from the wild and get rabies or leprosy, you're hurting yourself, and that's good enough reason to ban it.

Which is why I propose a licensing regime, except for animals that demonstrably don't spread disease and are also common and easy to care for (negating two other common objections), and suggest that it should basically be shall issue.

Currently, most states with licensing regimes explicitly exclude the issuing of permits for animals kept as pets. You can take them from the wild if you're a rehabber and possibly keep them (though usually not take them from the wild) if you have an "animal ambassador" act, but normal people can't have them at all, let alone take them from the wild.

Absentia wrote:I don't think the police are going to break down your door on suspicion of owning a starling if that's something you really want to do.

A starling? No. They're legal as pets in pretty much every state. While Tess pointed out to me that it's technically illegal to take them alive from the wild in MA, I doubt anybody's going to ask how you obtained it.

A blue jay? I've never heard of people being arrested for adopting native birds either, but then I've literally never heard of people keeping native birds taken from the wild. It's possible that as long as you keep your head down, the FWS leave you alone.

A raccoon? You are absofuckinglutely going to get in trouble.

Oh, and the problems with finding an exotic vet? Presumably they know if an animal is illegal, and doctor-patient confidentiality isn't a thing if the patient is an illegal native animal.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Fri May 27, 2016 6:44 pm

A big part of California's pet laws is that the invasive species may be detrimental to the wildlife, well, that and an irrational fear of ferrets for some reason to the point that you need a license to own one. Plus, a lot of California law is just put in place to prevent situations involving idiocy. Will stupid people or people who bother to actually be uneducated do this? Then it's illegal here. And, yet somehow, you can own ratites here. Is the Fish and Game Commission really trusting idiots with cassowaries? So, you can 't own a parrot, but you can own a rhea? I mean, they look cool, but really?
And have you seen this video:

That's an idiot right there, torturing that poor thing. It's defanged and secretes poison through biting its elbows when it's threatened.

I don't really have a problem with exotic pets as long as they can reasonably be a pet, but you really can't be selfish or an idiot about it.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby cmsellers » Fri May 27, 2016 7:50 pm

@Eric:
California's ban on gerbils and ferrets are based on a fear of invasiveness as well. Irrational? Most likely. But California isn't as bad as Alaska, which bans even more animals than California does despite the fact that almost no exotic species will survive in the wild there.

And you can have most parrots in California, except for Quaker parakeets. Quaker parakeets actually are cause for concern with invasiveness. They only colonize cities so they're not truly invasive the way starlings or house sparrows are, and the feral populations in the US come from escaped imports; escaped pets are likely too infrequent and too poorly-suited to the wild to establish colonies. So it's a terrible ban which should be repealed, but the fact that it exists makes sense.

Since lorises don't breed well in captivity, there are none in private hands (at least AFAIK) in the United States. A blanket ban on importing private ones means there will likely never be. The ones you see on videos are wild-caught individuals in (usually) parts of Eastern Europe where animal welfare provisions are generally lax and rarely enforced, and CITES is treated as more of a suggestion that a treaty. I oppose defanging because I agree it's cruel, and I don't think slow lorises should be as easy to obtain as they are in the countries where those videos are coming from.

Lorises don't exist in the wild in the United States, and this thread is specifically about taking baby animals from the wild and raising them. In the countries where slow lorises can be plucked from the wild, the fact that they are endangered means I would oppose allowing it (even though it's done in those countries). If they weren't endangered I'd still oppose defanging, and would support licensing for animals where proper care is considerably more difficult than most people would be willing or able to provide (such as lorises).

However a loris is much more particular in its needs than the cute animals people usually pluck from the wild and raise in the United States. The cases I've heard of in the United States involve raccoons, opossums, squirrels, rabbits, and armadillos. None of these is exceptionally difficult in its care and indeed the main concern with most native mammals would be disease rather than difficulty of proper care.

With birds native I'm less certain. I've never heard of people taking in native birds (illegal under the MBTA) as pets, however I suspect that most songbirds (likely to be the most popular pets if legalized) would be fairly easy to care for (I know most corvids and finches are; I imagine chickadees and tanagers would be similar; I'm less certain about icterids, though grackles and red-winged blackbirds are omnivorous and seem quite adaptable), while I know hummingbirds and birds of prey would be rather trickier. Since I can imagine a lot of people wanting hummingbirds and saw-whet owls as pets, it would make sense to require licenses and facilities checks for such birds.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby Crimson847 » Fri May 27, 2016 11:52 pm

I suppose the main question for me re: pet ownership is what the alternative is for the animal. For domestic animals, the alternative to being someone's pet is usually rotting in a cage at a shelter (or worse, a pet shop) or getting put down, so I'm inclined to leave bureaucratic barriers to a minimum simply to avoid those outcomes. For wild animals, unless it's an orphan, an invasive species, or permanently injured the alternative to being a pet is usually much more acceptable, so I'm less sanguine about the idea and my existing reservations about possible mistreatment or fucking up ecosystems by getting rid of all the cute animals hold more force.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat May 28, 2016 12:15 am

Redacted
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby Crimson847 » Sat May 28, 2016 12:44 am

ghijkmnop wrote:I pretty much draw my line at anything that is:
a. Bigger than I am.
b. A predator.
c. A carnivore.
d. Is sneaky.
e. Flings feces or masturbates.


To be fair, horses, cows, cats, dogs, snakes, lizards, rodents, and most fish all fall into at least one of those categories. So this would rule out pretty much everything except herbivorous fish...though some of those do look pretty awesome, so there's that.

Image

For instance, this is a parrot fish, which is like a normal fish except it drops acid and goes to raves.
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby cmsellers » Sat May 28, 2016 1:23 am

ghijkmnop wrote:I pretty much draw my line at anything that is:
a. Bigger than I am.
b. A predator.
c. A carnivore.
d. Is sneaky.
e. Flings feces or masturbates.

While those restrictions are horribly draconian and you have made my list for proposing them, they make more sense than Massachusetts' policy.

In theory, Massachusetts prohibits any animal that is more work than a domesticated animal. In practice, Massachusetts is horribly confused about what "domesticated" means.

Massachusetts bans any "wild" animal that isn't explicitly legalized, which means only animals with groups to lobby for them being legalized are legalized. The sugar glider, for example, wasn't legalized until 2013. But Massachusetts legalizes any animal which can plausibly be called "domestic."

This means that a bison, an emu, an ostrich, and a rhea are all legal with no restrictions in Massachusetts. However prairie dogs, mousebirds, lesser hedgehog tenrecs, and fennec foxes are not, even though they require less or equal work to chinchillas, cockatiels, hedgehogs, and ferrets respectively (all "domesticated" animals under MA law), simply because nobody cared enough to put them in the included list.

Crimson847 wrote:I suppose the main question for me re: pet ownership is what the alternative is for the animal. For domestic animals, the alternative to being someone's pet is usually rotting in a cage at a shelter (or worse, a pet shop) or getting put down, so I'm inclined to leave bureaucratic barriers to a minimum simply to avoid those outcomes. For wild animals, unless it's an orphan, an invasive species, or permanently injured the alternative to being a pet is usually much more acceptable, so I'm less sanguine about the idea and my existing reservations about possible mistreatment or fucking up ecosystems by getting rid of all the cute animals hold more force.

Does this mean that you oppose the raising of domesticated animals for meat, Crimson? Your argument sounds suspiciously similar to that expressed the animal rights activists who say they want to ban exotic pets but are OK with cats and dogs (and usually rabbits and ferrets). However these same activists also suggest that being used for food (or having their milk or eggs used for food) is a fate worse than never being born.

While I would disagree with them where traditional farms are concerned, I would agree fully where factory farms are concerned. And yet I eat factory-farmed meat because it's cheap and delicious, because I rate my happiness above the life satisfaction of other species. I'd support animal welfare restrictions that drive up the price of meat in principle, but am not willing to vote with my wallet and only buy humanely raised meat.

Likewise, on animal welfare grounds, I support restrictions on species that most people are going to fuck up on the care of without further instruction (such as slow lorises), but oppose full-on bans, and think that if an animal's care basically amounts to "feed it a diet that's affordable and easy to provide, clean its cage every week, give it some toys and socialize it (up to an hour-a-day minimum) so it doesn't get bored" it should be legal without restrictions. (Unless of course disease concerns and a nanny-state mentality mean you need to train people on how not go give themselves hantavirabies, which I'm fine with as a compromise.)
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Re: "Wild Animals Belong in the Wild"

Postby ghijkmnop » Sat May 28, 2016 2:03 am

Redacted
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